Wrangell Medical Center is looking for a new CEO after interim CEO Marla Sanger announced her resignation last month.

She will leave at the end of October to move closer to her family in Washington.

Sanger’s departure will mark the end of the hospital’s leadership contract with PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center. Wrangell Medical Center bought administrative services from PeaceHealth, and Sanger started working at WMC as interim CEO in November 2012.

Sanger took over after the hospital board was recalled and replaced. When she arrived, the hospital was involved in a few lawsuits.

Sanger said a lot has changed at WMC in the past three years.

“There are a number of things that have continued to impact the hospital as a result of all of that. So it’s not something that just goes away overnight when the turmoil ends,” Sanger said. “I’d say we’ve pretty much passed all of that now and are able to focus on lots of other things, which we have been doing for the past couple of years.”

She said one project she is especially proud of was replacing a costly, outsourced physical therapy program with Wrangell’s own fully staffed rehab department.

Sanger said before she leaves, she wants to make sure the new CEO will be ready to take on the pre-development phase of the new hospital project.

“I have talked with The Foraker Group about the pre-development program, and we have been invited to submit an application for that,” Sanger said. “I will be revisiting this with them to see if it would be best to have the application go in when we have a new person in the CEO position.”

WMC held public meetings with the head of The Foraker Group this spring to kick off a second attempt at building a new hospital.

The Wrangell Medical Center Board of Directors has started reviewing applicants for the CEO position. The board decided to forgo a costly executive search firm and posted the job opening online.

Sanger said she is excited about the good response so far from potential candidates.

“When we get closer to knowing who is probably going to end up in the top tier, then we’ll be making plans to get the community involved. And we’ll make sure that our stakeholders have an opportunity to be part of this process in some way,” Sanger said.

The hospital board will try to hire a new CEO within the next three months.